Last year, my therapist had me read a book. It had an appropriately schmaltzy self-help type title, and involved a lot of scenarios about people who had a hard time feeling appropriate emotions for the situations they were in. I remember walking away from reading it with a few small reactions, one of which was that I was struck by how I was very much not an angry person.

That’s gotten me to occasionally wonder if it was a personality trait, or if I’d gotten so used to taking situations I was in and turning them around to see in which ways I was at fault.

I used to think that everything on some level was my fault, and if that’s the case, I felt like it wasn’t appropriate to get angry at the other party(ies) for something that was due to a failing of mine.

Hindsight and a lot of therapy later, I know now that when I would do that, it was my depression feeding itself.

Now that I’ve got a better handle on my depression and my opinion of myself has dramatically improved, I find I have been getting angry about things. And I’ll say, it’s weird to feel happy that I’m angry about something.

But I am happy. My friends and GF have been really wonderful this weekend since I got some, in the end, unsurprising and infuriating news.

I’ll say this much: you can always count on an emotionally manipulative, self-serving pathological liar to lie.

I was upset. I spent the last year of my life grieving for someone who didn’t deserve a drop of it. How could I have let myself get suckered back in so completely? How could I have opened myself up to so much more damage at the hands of this person who has damaged me so completely before? How could I have been such a gullible fool?

Fuck this shit. There is no more forgiveness in me. There are no more doubts. Take the unearned grief, you piece of shit. That’s yours now. That’s all you’ll ever get from me again. Now take my anger. All of the anger I should have felt rather than compassion the first time. All of the anger I should have felt rather than the guilt. Fuck you for taking advantage of my kindness and empathy. You don’t get to feel proud of me because I became the person I am IN SPITE of you rather than because of you.

I am angry I had to take today off of work because of you. I am angry you get any kind of feelings from me whatsoever. You don’t get my guilt. You don’t get my grief. You don’t get my sadness or kindness, my joy, my delight, my empathy, my pain. You deserve none of it.

Those I reserve for the people in my life who actually and demonstrably care about me.